Apr. 17, 2015

Water Wanes in the West

While announcing the first-ever mandatory water restrictions in California’s history on April 1, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown stated: “It’s a different world.”

A different and drier California, indeed. Measurements from NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) found that the Tuolumne River Basin, in California’s Sierra Nevada, has only 40 percent of the water it did last year, which was California’s second driest year on record.

California’s drought is part of a larger picture in the Western United States, where water is an ever-precious resource. We hear from Tom Painter, principal investigator for ASO, and B. Lynn Ingram, author of The West Without Water, about whether drought is the new normal.